It’s fantastic to be featuring Todd Sucherman, Stan Lynch, Kassa Overall and Evgeny Novikov this month. All four drummers have done quite a bit of reimagining within their musical careers. Reimagining anything takes the Three C’s: Creativity, Commitment, and Courage. Reimagining often requires you to walk against the wind of popular and accepted opinion, risking acceptance, and sometimes even success. Styx’s music had progressive leanings back in the 70s and early 80s. However, (original Styx drummer) John Panozzo was a very “un-prog” drummer. Early on, and as the band had more commercial success, Panozzo left a lot of space in Styx’s music. He had a unique and unconventional drumming approach, but he created cool drum parts in great songs. When Todd Sucherman joined Styx in 1996, I heard Todd reimagining Panozzo’s parts, and the drum world took note. Obviously Panozzo and Sucherman are different people and different drummers, and they […]

October 2025 Issue